


The Eulogy

by preferredmethodofprocrastination



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: F/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:36:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6121150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preferredmethodofprocrastination/pseuds/preferredmethodofprocrastination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wanda helps Peggy attends her own funeral. Steve reacts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eulogy

He sat in front of the church, in his suit and tie, smoking a cigarette and drinking whiskey. 

She was dead, the woman of his dreams, the woman who made him. Peggy was the one who built him from the ground up, even if it was Erskine’s formula that gave him his strength. It was only ever Peggy who took him up in her arms, who kissed him into existence and out of it and back in again in a matter of minutes. And she was lying in there in a coffin. She was too alive to be dead. Her eyes were too bright to be closed forever. Yet he was there, and Tony was there, and half of the good SHIELD was there, mourning her. Her children were crying for her, their children were sobbing for her, and he sat there on the steps of the church, sinning. 

Wanda joined him. Her eyes never met his, not once. She knew what he needed, and what he needed was the strength to give the eulogy he wrote her. Wanda rested her hand against his temple and sighed.

“She’ll be there, Captain,” Wanda said. She took the cigarette from him and took a long drag. Out of the corner of his eye, Steve saw a cloud of Wanda’s magic brewing.

He re-entered the church during the song just before he was meant to speak and made eye contact with Tony for half a second. Tony was the first to look away with red rimmed eyes and a look of blind terror in them. Steve never knew how much Peggy meant to him, never knew that she was his godmother. He never knew that Tony knew her children. 

The song ended and he fiddled with his speech. He mounted the podium, slowly. There was a cough. A pew creaked. Peggy lay silent, old and grey and staged in her coffin. Steve was almost ready to laugh out loud because the Peggy he knew would have hated this. This stupid ceremony with everyone crying over her instead of doing their damned jobs.

That was until she entered the room. He sighed audibly and put it down, the speech. He shook his head and looked at her.

“God, I can see her now,” Steve choked. He put his head down on the podium. Peggy’s son covered his mouth and uttered a heart wrenching sob.  Her daughter had her head buried in her husband’s shoulder while their assorted children rocked back and forth. “You didn’t get to see her like I did,” the vision of Peggy, conjured by Wanda slid down the aisle. 

“Her lips were always perfectly red, you know,” he said. Peggy smiled with her red lips. She brushed her fingers over the tops of the pews, tapping red manicured nails on the hands of those who clenched the rails for support. They didn’t feel a thing, nor did they notice her, waltzing into her own wake, dressed in her red dress like some sort of dream of sin. 

“She always was so put together, so incredibly beautiful. During the war. She managed to be beautiful no matter where we were. Middle of London, gorgeous. Middle of a mudpit in France, divine, beyond compare.” He cleared his throat. “And I can see her now, laughing at me for being so… so stupid,” she was indeed laughing, her singing alto voice rang through the church and into his soul, only his soul. 

“I’m talking like a fool when I had a speech all done up and ready,” Peggy’s children were in between laughter and tears. He was laughing too, smiling because she was there, and she was angelic. Her feet touched the ground, but at what price? Her lips pressed to the top of her son’s head and her ghostly hand stroked her daughter’s head. He ran his hands through his hair because she was driving him insane. This vision of his lover, his partner, the only woman he might ever truly love was going to be his undoing. She mounted the stairs to the pulpit and he flinched away. She approached her coffin and leant over, examining herself all in white, pale in death. She gave herself a nod and moved one of her long grey curls into a more proper position. She turned around and blew a kiss to the audience, the gathered, the mourners. 

“She’d be so happy you all are here,” he said. His heart grew suddenly heavier than stone. “She loved you all,” he returned to his speech notes and said a few things. He talked about their first meeting and her bravery. He did his canned speech all the while, Peggy was there, at his shoulder. She stroked her hand across his chest, kissed his shoulder, and looked into his eyes with her flawless dewy brown ones, the ones that were too bright to close ever, let alone forever. And after every sentence, with every pause he had to take to collect himself, to avoid crying and screaming and sobbing, she mouthed to him, whispered to him in hushed tones, words of comfort, words of bliss.

“I love you, Steve,” she kissed his cheek and pressed her cheek to his. "I love you so much."

“Thank you all, for letting me speak at the funeral of the best and greatest woman I have ever known,” he left the podium with the stupid canned line he could only barely bring himself to utter. He left Peggy standing there and smiling down at the crowd of the gathered. Laughing and crying and shaking they were, mourning her death, not quite celebrating her life. She cocked her hip and bit her lip sassing him like she always did. She knew what he was thinking, just like she always did. 

Her face suddenly twisted downwards in the semblance of sadness and Steve saw one other person who could see Peggy. It was Tony. Tony’s eyes streamed and his nose ran like a river. He was rocking back and forth next to a baffled Pepper. He looked up at the pulpit like he was ready for the sermon of a lifetime, like he needed one.

Steve watched Peggy leave her place at the pulpit and weave her way through the crowd of otherwise occupied mourners to get to Tony. When she arrived at where he sat, hyperventilating and sobbing, she bent over to get closer to his face in a way that was motherly and sweet, lovely and comforting. She tipped her head and kissed him tenderly on the forehead. 

“Be yourself, Anthony,” he heard her say. “Don’t be the person your father was. You are good,” Steve had to leave again before he started sobbing.


End file.
